Thinking isn’t inherently bad, but what you focus on can be. Reflecting on past mistakes, or planning for the future are crucial for long term achievement. But when it comes to performance, in the moment, when it matters most, past and future can get you into trouble. When your thoughts are moving into the past or the future, you can easily get caught up in a mental vortex, and spin out of control. Most importantly you lose contact with the present moment, the only moment you can fully respond with clarity.

How you hold your body, not only changes your physiology, it also changes how you think and feel about yourself. How you show up in the world then, matters more than you ‘think’. Scientists have discovered that some very simple gestures, such as how you shape your mouth, can affect your mental attitude. Bottom line, the fact is while our minds and bodies are different, they always go together.

Mindfulness is a state of being where you are able to just be present without judging the outcome of your experience. It involves not becoming attached to negative thinking and emotions, and the stories that have always held you back from achieving success in your life. The outcome is the ability to be fully present, which then leads to what I call the fluid mind. This is an embodied state that will allow you to take on the martial arts of everyday life and win!

Breathing shouldn’t only be seen as something you do simply to stay alive, but rather, and equally important something you need in order to act. More and more, the medical community is realising that sympathetic dominance (fear/aggression response) underlies many modern-day maladies, including anxiety and hypertension. While all the variables of the root cause of sympathetic dominance are not completely understood, one root causes is, in fact, suboptimal breathing.

True success in life is one’s ability to bounce back from setbacks. But it is also about putting in the work. In this final section of the workshop I focus on showing you how to build resilience, surviving the hustle and why I believe you need more challenge play in your life to truly be successful.